Common Origination and Disbursement

COD Processing Update

For Pell Grants
September 17, 2004

Pell Grants
COD News

COD System Maintenance Planned For Sunday, September 19, 2004 (09/15/04)
The COD System will undergo routine maintenance on Sunday, September 19, 2004 from 12:30
A.M. (ET) until 12:30 P.M. (ET). During this period, users will not be able to submit or retrieve
data via the COD web site. Additionally, batches submitted by schools will be held and not
processed until after the COD System comes back up. COD apologizes for any inconvenience
this outage may cause. If you have any questions, contact the COD School Relations Center.

Second 2003-2004 Pell Grant Deobligation Due To Verification Status “W” (09/13/04)
On September 11, 2004, the COD System deobligated 2003-2004 Award Year Pell Grant
disbursements that did not have a verification status updated from “W” to a valid status of “V”,
“S”, or “Blank”. As noted in the warning message that we sent to affected schools on August 20,
2004, these disbursements were considered overawards and reduced to a zero dollar amount
($0.00), even though the disbursements were previously accepted in the COD System. This
deobligation affected Pell Grant disbursements at approximately 195 schools.
A school affected by the September 11, 2004 deobligation will—
• Receive a PGTX (PGTX04OP message class) file in the school’s SAIG mailbox
indicating the number of students and total amount of the decrease;
• Receive a system-generated negative disbursement file (COMRECOP message class/ND
document type for Full Participants and PGDA04OP message class/ # G batch type for
Phase-in Participants);
• Receive a new Electronic Statement of Account (ESOA) reflecting the decrease; and
• See a change in the school's Current Funding Level (CFL) that reflects the deobligated
disbursements.
Note: A school that did not have students with a verification status of “W” on September 11,
2004 will not be affected by this deobligation process.
If verification has been completed as required or is not required and a school believes a student’s
2003-2004 disbursement should not have been reduced to zero, the school must complete the
following steps in this order:
1) The school must send an update to the verification status of the award, and the update
must be accepted by the COD System.
2) Once the verification status is updated to “V”, “S”, or “Blank”, the actual disbursement
(DRI = true) for the correct amount may be submitted to the COD System for processing.

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For Pell Grants
Note: Full Participants can perform steps 1 and 2 in the same submission to COD if reported in
the same student record.
If the verification status for a student’s award continues to be “W”, do not resubmit the
disbursement to COD. If the disbursement is resubmitted, it will be rejected by the COD System.
As a reminder, the deadline for receipt of a valid SAR or ISIR after verification has been
completed is September 17, 2004.
If you have any questions regarding the deobligation of disbursements due to verification status
“W”, contact the COD School Relations Center.

All Schools Must Be COD Full Participants Beginning With 2005-2006 Award Year
[08/02/04 (Updated 08/09/04)]
As a reminder, all schools must be Full Participants beginning with the 2005-2006 Award Year.
This means that all schools must be able to submit 2005-2006 Pell and/or Direct Loan origination
and disbursement data to the COD System using the COD Common Record in XML format.

Note: FSA recently informed schools in GEN-04-06 that the implementation of the Common
Record: ISIR will not be implemented for the 2005-2006 Award Year. The adjustment of the
Common Record: ISIR implementation schedule does not affect the requirement that all schools
must be COD Full Participants beginning with the 2005-2006 Award Year.

Current Phase-In Participants can refer to the following sections of the 2004-2005 COD
Technical Reference (http://www.ifap.ed.gov/cod/0405CODTechRefDraft.html/) for information
that may be helpful in determining their Full Participant solution:
• Volume I, Section 3 provides information about XML.
• Volume II, Section 1 and Volume V, Section 1 provide information about FSA’s
EDExpress software that can be used to submit data to the COD System.

Updated information about Full Participant sign up for the 2005-2006 Award Year is posted on
the IFAP web site at http://www.ifap.ed.gov/eannouncements/0806CODFullParticReq0506.html/.

Reports and Data Requests

Except as listed below, all Pell Grant reports and data requests are available as specified in
Volume VIII, Section 8 of the 2004-2005 COD Technical Reference posted on the IFAP web site
ISSUES at www.IFAP.ed.gov/. There are issues with the following Pell Grant reports and/or data
requests:
• Pell POP Report— For 2004-2005, is not available on the COD
web site. COD is evaluating the functionality
to push the report to schools’ COD newsboxes.
Report is being pushed to schools’ SAIG
mailboxes (Message Class PGPR05OP).
(08/25/04)

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• Verification Status Report— For 2004-2005, is not being pushed to schools’
SAIG mailboxes and is not available on the
COD web site. COD is evaluating all
functionality. (08/25/04)

Resolved Issues In Clean Up

COD has implemented code fixes for the issues listed below and is cleaning up the affected
records. After a clean up has been completed, its status will be updated and it will remain in this
section for an additional 7 calendar days.
Issue In Progress Completed
Disbursements Not Displaying On COD Web √
Site
COD Edit 116 Not Working Correctly √

Current Issues
Duplicate Disbursement Information In COD [05/06/04 (Updated 09/17/04)]
COD has learned that duplicate disbursement numbers are displaying incorrectly on the COD
web site’s Award Disbursements Information screen. On this screen under the Disbursement
Number column, disbursement numbers are appearing twice. However, when viewing the
Disbursement Information screen, each disbursement displays a different status (Pending or
Disbursed).

COD has made significant progress in researching the cause of this issue and anticipates a
resolution in September 2004. Updates will be provided as more information becomes available.

Student Name And Date Of Birth Not Updated In COD [05/03/04 (Updated 09/17/04)]
As previously reported, COD identified an issue where new 2003-2004 and 2004-2005
origination records are accepted in COD; however, the student’s Name and Date of Birth (DOB)
updates submitted by the school are not displaying on the COD web site’s Person Information
screen. The COD web site is reflecting the Name and DOB from the previous award year.
Additionally, in some cases, changes to Name and DOB for previously accepted origination
records are not displaying on the Person Information screen as well.

COD is still analyzing this issue and appreciates your patience. Updates will be provided as more
information becomes available.

Some Null Tags Submitted Via Batch Not Updated In COD [08/31/04 (Updated 09/16/04)]
As previously reported, a null tag containing a nil=”true” attribute can be submitted for some
data elements in a Common Record document to remove or delete content currently on file in the
COD database. Recently, COD determined that some null tags are being accepted by the COD
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System, but are not appropriately updating the COD database. This means that if a school
submits a null tag for some data elements, the COD System is ignoring it and the content on the
COD database for that data element is not being removed.

On September 7, 2004 COD implemented a code fix to allow a null tag submitted for the Low
Tuition and Fees Code data element to update the COD database correctly. Additionally, a null
tag submitted for the Verification Status Code data element continues to update the COD
database correctly. COD continues research to ensure that all applicable data elements reported
with a null tag will update the COD database correctly. Note that not all data elements can be
submitted with null tags; refer to the COD Technical Reference, Volume II, Section 3 for the
applicable data elements.

In the meantime, schools needing to remove or delete content in COD for a specific data element
may do so via the COD web site.

Rejected Records Not Viewable On The COD Web Site [07/30/04 (Updated 08/26/04)]
Some schools are receiving an error message when attempting to view rejected records on the
COD web site’s Batch Detail Information screen. Clicking on the Rejected link in the Award No.
column causes the following error message to display: “An unexpected error has occurred.
Please contact your administrator if the problem persists.”

On August 10, 2004, COD partially corrected this problem by migrating a code fix to correct the
affected Phase-In records. Next, the code fix will be migrated to correct the affected Common
Records. COD will provide more information about the code fix for Common Records as soon as
it becomes available.

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